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Boom & Bust, Part 3
Continued from page 1
Published on June 10, 2008 at 2:03pm
"The bank is in a bit of quandary," Slesnick asserts, while committing to follow up with the board. "I just can't understand how this can happen. Why wouldn't the City of Miami get involved?"
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Jacqueline Carini
Anna Marie Wilson's ceiling fell on her last month.
Subject(s):
mortgage crisis, foreclosures, Liberty City, rentersCity officials have not cited the building for violation nor have the structures have been declared unsafe. This is not a big surprise, because the citation process is mostly driven by complaints, and residents don't want the buildings condemned. For now, it's still a place to live — as crappy as it may be.
Says Celeste Brown: "This is one of those things that you can't go over it. You can't go under it. You've got to go through it."
Langhorne is seeking up to $87,500 from investors to replace both roofs and cover extermination costs. (Termites, roaches, and ants brazenly march on apartment walls.)
Last week, residents including Brandon Brown, Celeste's 21-year-old son, protested outside Great Florida Bank headquarters in Coral Gables. Brown wants word to seep beyond Liberty City. "Basically we just let them know what we've got to go through," he says. "Some of them couldn't believe it."
But as the bank waits, renters empty gallons of bleach each day to stave off the mold. Anthony Gray, a 53-year-old married father who leads tenants at the NW Eighth Avenue building, worries for his three children. His 14-year-old daughter, Cynthia, has severe asthma and falls asleep with the help of a breathing machine.
This year she has gone through three machines.
"She refuses to use it once a roach is in it," Gray says.
That could be because, a few months ago, she almost swallowed a roach that had scurried inside. She was lucky; she coughed it up. "You don't want this for your child, but there's nothing we can do," he says.
Residents also hope more ceilings won't fall.
Last month Katherine Starks, who lives in the NW 70th Street building, was watching television while sitting on her bed's country-blue comforter when the ceiling crashed down. "I've never been that scared in my life," says the 44-year-old.
A five-foot cavern yawns above her bed. It matches the one in her bathroom.
A few weeks later, at 6901 NW Eighth Ave., 51-year-old Anna Marie Wilson was drinking a beer on her beige couch when drywall cascaded down. She lives directly below Celeste Brown.
Her living room ceiling now sports a round four-foot-by-three-foot hole. She knows the sag in her bathroom ceiling can't be a good omen.
"The ceiling is fixing to come down," she says wearily, her eyes widening with fear. It's the Friday before the beginning of hurricane season.
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